


It Ends Here Tonight

by Loki_Friggasson



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Spoilers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Feels, Gen, HYDRA are assholes, Hydra (Marvel), Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, may be jossed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-14
Updated: 2014-10-14
Packaged: 2018-02-21 05:09:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2455928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loki_Friggasson/pseuds/Loki_Friggasson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, held captive and experimented on by HYDRA and Baron von Strucker.  Pietro struggles to protect his sister, but there is only so much he can do when he cannot even help himself...</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Ends Here Tonight

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the first post-credits scene from CA:TWS. Certain details and character "spoilers" also taken from the Entertainment Weekly "Age of Ultron" cover issue.
> 
> Sincerest thanks to my Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver from DragonCon (Katelyn and Colby), and to Jillian, for help with the beta'ing! :)

He’d been a fool. Such a stupid, careless fool to believe anything they said. After all he’d seen and had to do to protect her, only to naively believe that they ever had his best interests or **hers** at heart…much less that they’d **ever** keep their word. So stupid to trust, when after all this time he should’ve know better, smarter. For her sake, he should’ve seen this coming. He’d only ever wanted to find help...not that it mattered now, of course. It was **all** his fault.

They were deep, deep underground - miles, for all he knew - in some kind of military bunker, carved from the rock. And he, closely confined by steel bars, solid brick and reinforced walls he couldn’t shatter, and other countermeasures he couldn’t overcome. He’d tried, at first...oh, how he’d tried.

 Men in lab coats forever scurrying around, carrying instruments, running experiments, testing God only knew what. Heavily-armed soldiers he didn’t recognize. And always there was the man with the monocle, and the smooth, oily voice _(You are miracles, you will see, the whole world will see)_ , and with the cold, cold eyes _...Strucker_.

In this prison, all set up to test and dissect the newest and shiniest specimens, Pietro Maximoff crouched near the reinforced glass wall of his cage and worriedly gazed at his sister. Her cell adjoined his; they were separated by a barrier which might as well have been a hundred feet thick.

He almost always saw everything they did to her; it wasn’t long before he realized they **wanted** him to. He hurled himself against the walls, beat his fists on the unyielding glass, and he screamed for Strucker and the ‘doctors’ to stop, leave her alone, _take me, but don’t hurt her, you’ve done enough!_ But even if they heard, they didn’t so much as glance his way. The image of Wanda - convulsing on her back, clawing at her face and eyes, her mouth locked open - was permanently seared into his brain. She would scream and flail until they restrained her, and then whatever they injected her with would leave her slumped over, semiconscious, thin and frail.

They had to do it, especially after the first attack early on. Red light had shone from her eyes and fingers, and in a fit of explosive, uncontrolled violence she crushed one doctor flat into the wall. His ribcage had been embedded in the stone. Next time, she caved in the skulls of two guards and left bloodstains on the ceiling. Even as she’d done it, Pietro had howled and beat his fists into the brick in a frenzy to reach her. With these childlike bouts of violence, when she was erratic, confused and strange, and she didn’t know where or when she was...the ‘doctors’ made notes on their clipboards and made comments he couldn’t hear, and as Wanda writhed and contorted, they looked at her in ways Pietro did not like.

His twin. The other half of his soul. Tears streamed down his face as he watched them breaking her, unmaking her…taking her apart to see how she could do what she did, be what she was...even when she didn’t mean to, and she struggled to control it; now, of course, they made sure she couldn’t.

Wanda screamed unheard; Pietro, feeling it in the very marrow of his bones, screamed and railed right along with her. She tore at her face and eyes as tendrils of red light streaked from her fingertips. She was always worse after what they did.

And Pietro for his part swore and uselessly threatened them, and he threw himself into the walls at just the fraction of blurred speed he could muster in that confined space until he was concussed and blood streamed from his nose. Staggering in his cell, he would vomit up acid, bile, and the pitiful remnants of the slop they pushed through the cat flap.

Behind glass, he now sobbed even harder in knowing how badly he was failing her, and betraying every promise he’d ever made. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, though she couldn’t hear. He wished only to hold her and reassure her that it would all be okay somehow - and that they would make it out of here. But all along he knew that to be a lie, as he watched from that maddening distance - so close, yet impossibly far - as his sister frayed and fell apart.

“I’m so sorry I got us into this. I just wanted to help you...” His lips were cracked and trembling; his vision was blurred by tears falling thick and fast. He curled flush against the glass as though, by sheer dint of will, he could phase through every barrier, and reach her to make this right. His voice was hoarse with emotion, raw with all her pain. Despairingly, he watched her restlessly shiver and twitch; she was a huddled mess of tangled hair and contorted limbs on the cold cement floor. Almost like she was having the dreams again - the nightmares... Before this, sometimes it was so bad she wouldn’t sleep for days at a stretch. She’d come unhinged if he wasn’t there helping her through it. He knew what it was like inside her head; the outside world was unreal to her, and he knew he was the only thing keeping her grounded, **here**. The only solid, sure thing she knew... Only now she was going it alone, and it struck him as torture plain and simple. Torture which he still wished, **begged** that they’d inflict on him instead.

Wanda was curled up on her side, knees tucked into her chest under the thin surgical gown. Hands covered her ears, blocking out what only she ever heard. It was the blankness in her haunted, nearly **dead** eyes, bruised and bleak in her pale, sick face, which most terrified Pietro. Watching her twitch and shiver, Pietro choked on a scream of anguish and frustration in his raw throat. He felt every bit of her suffering, and her fear _...she was so afraid and it was all his fault. He'd volunteered them for this, it was all to help her; he didn’t know any better then, but what difference did that make now? He'd failed her, and now HYDRA and Strucker would - they would -_

Pietro slumped against the wall, and saw his sister, his twin, his other half - unconscious or unaware, or off in some world where he could not reach her. He felt the familiar tremor in his bones, molecules vibrating with instinctive, desperate need to move, flee, take her and run far away from all this, where nothing and nobody would hurt her or use her again. Reach her, save her...

Of course, he already knew that no one was coming to save him and Wanda from whatever fate awaited; it wouldn’t be so quick or merciful as **death** , though - killing them outright. Not when Strucker had gone to such trouble just to keep them both alive. With awful clarity, Pietro understood that HYDRA – _Strucker_ – they were going to break him...and, for Wanda’s sake, he’d let them. Let them carve up their little lab rat to figure out what made him tick, let them do anything...just to make it stop. He was so, so tired... **too** tired, to keep fighting.

“I’m so sorry,” Pietro bowed his head and breathed again, small thread of a voice left cracked and hoarse from all her screams. Or maybe he just **thought** it instead...with all desperation, willed her to somehow hear it...and for her to look at him, keep focused on him and on their bond. On every breath they shared, and on their hearts, which beat as one. Mutely he lifted his palm, and he mirrored her hunched, fetal-huddled position like that would help him get any closer.

_I love you._

The red tinge slowly bled from her eyes and fingertips, and tears fell into her thick, matted hair. Her lips faintly, barely moved, though she seemed hardly aware of it. Her own hand twitched, spasmed - moved, seemingly past conscious control - until it too was splayed upon the glass of her own cage. Such a small, furtive movement... They stayed like that, the twins huddled in their cells, each futilely reaching for the other. _Forgive me,_ Pietro silently mouthed as, on the other side of the barrier, his tormented sister did the same. _I‘m so sorry. Please..._

_Please..._

_I love you._


End file.
